


Defining Home

by Kasan_Soulblade



Series: Of Shattered Glass/These Warped Perspectives [4]
Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: F/M, Pillow Fights, Spoilers, Wings, a sorta win for Kratos, adult matters alluded too, serious conversation derailed, wing fetish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 11:33:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1303396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasan_Soulblade/pseuds/Kasan_Soulblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A "What Came After: Crimson Arch" piece. AKA a part of the "Double Edged Sword" story that wouldn't fit in the original fanfic. Thus it exists alone but is related.</p><p>Definitions and pillow fights in Derris Kharlan.  Kratos and Anna fluff... with the fluff becoming a part of the dispute!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Defining Home

**Author's Note:**

> Cleared up for clarity and smoothing out a few jagged parts for flow reasons. There are spoilers for Kratos' background and present state throughout. 
> 
> This is a very old ficlet indeed... One of my first.
> 
> Translation: Derris fa Sith is angelic (Shards canon) for "Angel of Death" in modern English.
> 
> Angelic however is not so exact and roughly/literally translates to "holy/sky flight relating to death" with allusions to flight ending in death directed at other parties, not the flyer.

 

Defining Home

She smiled in his arms, spoke of home; it was a rare thing for her to do. She did not dwell upon a beloved relative or some childhood memory; she had none of the first and scarce few of the second. Her home, or so she claimed was him.

"I spent my whole life looking for a place when I didn't need one." Anna sighed, snuggling into his embrace. "I was looking for a person."

"A person can't be a home my love." He gently kissed her on the forehead and she grinned like a little girl, almost glowed with pleasure. "They have no windows, no walls, and cannot offer any form of shelter…"

She cut him off by pressing her lips against his and he remained quiet for quite some time after.

XXX

"Where is your home Kratos?" Anna asked, playfully grooming his wings.

He lay on his back, arms pillowing his head, eyes closed to mere slits as she seemed to stroke every feather with her hands. He considered his answer for a moment, stared into the silver tinted dark, the marble walls. He could see the stars, could see the heavens though a screen of glass kept him apart from them they were so close it seemed as if he could reach out and touch them…

"Are you taking a nap?" She pulled on a feather and he yelped, his wings folded against him and he turned to glare up at her.

"That, was uncalled for!" He flared, favoring her with his most vicious glare.

"Well you falling asleep when I ask a question was just as bad!"

"I wasn't falling asleep Anna, I just got… distracted."

Anna gave him a long flat glare and he sighed, his wings unfolded slowly. Minding her and a precariously positioned pillow to better pool over the edge of the bed. The tips brushed against the ground and shivered. She knew that pose; it was a mute plea for her to go back to what she’d been doing. Anger made her daring, made her forget what she was doing and see opportunity when there shouldn’t have been one. She lay down on his back, pinned down his wings with her bulk and was startled to feel warm tingling jolts of mana that crackled about her lovers back like static electricity.

Only one other had been so daring, centuries ago made careless by drink and shamed sleep. That other had been thrown clear across the room, burned and charred and put out of their misery once Kratos had gotten over the innate shock of having done something like that without knowing how. Or how to undo damage like that.

Suffice to say Anna’s shock was eclipsed by his. Ignoring the indignant (and terrified) stiffening to his spine, Anna settled herself just so. Hair surly standing on end as the prickles followed each move she made herself comfortable. Utterly ignorant of why he’d stopped breathing.

There wasn’t pain to the little zaps as she cuddled him, just a ghost of warmth at discharge’s end. It wasn't painful, strangely pleasant, and she shifted a bit to get more comfortable something Kratos’ rigid half raised state was making hard.

She told him so, he didn’t hear, didn’t care. Mind back then, not here, and Kratos’ silence she forgot her anger in concern.

“Love?”

Snarling a few more colorful words from his extensive vocabulary he glared up at her, but though his words were sharp his body eased as she stroked hair and upper most of his wings eight.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine...”

“I can…”

“It’s fine.”

And previous anger, petty argument, it faded to little more than a mental niggle as he settled down and she settled atop him. More than content to lay while she slumbered he basked in silence and attentions all at once.

"Well?"

Pet became poke, what feathers that weren’t hopelessly pinned ruffled in offense he’d not voice.

"Well what?"

He’d try innocence, perhaps she’d be weary of….

"Home Kratos, you have this…" She waved a hand to encompass his home in Derris Kharlan, this gaudy crystal sheathed mess of rooms that he so despised. "But you never call it a home."

"It isn't home." Kratos sighed, damnation she was stubborn, bending an arm he set his chin upon it. Not for comfort, but rather to habits drive. He was not sulking, just folding to habit, that’s all. Habit was everything when all you had were memories and those memories were as vile as his. "I was born a poor man. I didn't have a home and I never really liked any place when I went on my quests. Nothing really reached out and said, settle here when you’re done. So I wandered."

He tried shrugging, failed, and figured that supernatural strength notwithstanding physics had its place. Odd how the natural laws of the world still existed alongside such absurdities of men made into angels and magic and other insanity.

"Then what's this?" She shifted so she lay on her back; he growled something that sounded a mite threatening and nearly considered getting up. But then she reached out and tickled the underside of his middle left wing and... Oh _Origin_ that felt good.

He deflated and she smirked, more than aware of all his sensitive spots.

"It’s a rental..” And no, his voice was not high pitched with budding ecstasy. It was not. “A rental…. And… you have ten seconds to move."

Because he was fifteen seconds from giggling. And people like him did not giggle. Angels did not giggle. And he was not going to. Ever.

"But I'm comfortable!" She pouted.

"Really?" One primary wing twitched. "Let's change that shall we?"

"What are you…?" She burst out into laughed as he brushed the silk soft edge of his wing against every inch of bare skin he could get it on. She rolled off of him laughing and he gasped out in pain all accidental when she rolled off him, over feathered appendage and off the bed. Snarling he pulled away from her, scooted to the other side of the bed in an invitation all unintentional. She took the offer, wincing at new bruises and laughing at his offended expression and the ghost of tickles skittering across her skin. "You started it!”

"That I did…" He looked so mournful, stroking his abused wing with a tender hand it made her sober. Just a tiny bit...

"Are you all right?'

"Please, do say that when you aren’t giggling. It'd sound more sincere." Kratos growled, folding his wings against him and turning away from her to look outside.

"You look like a turtle hiding under your shell."

He quit his study of too near stars to best glare at her. "I do not!"

"I'm sorry sweetie but you do."

"When did I turn into a sweetie?" He mock growled. "Last I looked Derris fa Sith were vile, evil, foul tempered entities of evil."

"So says the king of the land of feathered idiots, Lord Yggdrasil."

"Anna!" Kratos laughed, though with that type of joke was on him more than anything _it_ was funny. "Are you implying that Mithos might actually be an idiot? I’d scold you for it but you might be right."

"Might?" Anna snorted, reached for a pillow and whacked him on the back of the head. "You take that back, I'm always right!"

"How about the time you said that Tabasco sauce wasn't spicy?"

"Shut up, how was I supposed to know…" His smirk inspired her to violence, luckly all she had was a pillow and a bad aim.

Kratos caught the thrown pillow, made a show of fluffing it, than curled up on top of her offering. Accident or not it was his now, and she knew he wasn’t going to give it up, ever.

Nor was he one to drop an advantage in their duel of words. Now when it got him off the hook of explaining.

"The coloring of the sauce and the smell wasn't a clue?"

Anna did not fall to that bait, luckily for him there were alternatives.

"That's my pillow!"

"Which you surrendered by throwing it at me."

"It's mine." Her eyes glittered playfully; he knew that look and his feathers bristled in response to it. "Now you look like a porcupine."

He didn't answer that, decided not to, he just shuffled the pillow so an angle peeked out at her.

"Or maybe you're a cat?"

"Cat, porcupine, turtle, make up your mind Anna."

"Give me my pillow, Seraph."

"Not a chance inferior…"

"Oh that's it!" She got onto her knees and shoved; he was perched on the edge of the bed and almost went over. Flaring his wings Kratos lazily hovered a scant inch from the ground. With an effort he hardly noticed anymore he employed mana and flight so that he was righted, standing without ground to brace him. The pillow in his arms, the grin plastered across his face, said it all.

"Give it!"

"Why?"

"Oh… you…."

He shrugged whilst flying, slowly fluttered over the bed and landed on the other side of the room. He folded his wings to his body, for all the world just another auburn haired man with an exotic cape that was more segment and feather and fancy than practicle.

"Spoils of the war mi'lady." He bowed and she bent down and snatched a pillow from the floor and pelted him with it, he again bowed, snatched up the second pillow and grinned at her. "Twice the b-"

"Keep it clean beloved."

"-spoils." He smoothly changed what he was going to say, still grinning at her all the while.

"Give it."

He arched an eyebrow at her. "Make me."

She got up, lips bared in a snarling sort of smile, and proceeded to do just that.


End file.
